Feb. 10th – Isiah Thomas was among the many Pistons luminaries at The Palace of Auburn Hills on hand to honor Chauncey Billups as the Pistons made his the tenth number to be sent to the Palace rafters.

Zeke was amongst those giving speeches to Mr. Big Shot. Isiah -who had his #11 retired by the Pistons on Feb. 2nd, 1996- spoke about how Chauncey’s jersey going to the rafters helped add to the tradition of the Detroit Pistons, something he said the team had none of when he was drafted in 1981. And, as the Detroit Free Press noted, the Piston faithful in attendance gave “The Captain” of the Bad Boys an appropriate welcoming:

A who’s who of Pistons greats gathered on the court to honor Billups, including Isiah Thomas, who received a deafening ovation.

For what it’s worth ESPN’s ranking the 100 NBA players to ever play. They’ve got Zeke ranked pretty low in my opinion…#26. I’m not big on advanced stats. They can keep their usage rates, metrics, algorithms, Pythagorean theorems, and pie charts. As time goes by, more and more of these rankings are being done by guys too young to have actually seen Isiah compete, so they come up with artificial ways to rank greatness. The number that matters most is 94-feet, the length of the court, and what Isiah was able to accomplish in between those end lines. Isiah was among the very best in arguably the most competitive era of basketball. No disrespect to the guys that will rank ahead of Isiah, but they would be picked after him if you were a competent general manager that wanted to win.

I should start by saying I really like the overall design of this card, that’s why it pains me that it’s so all over the map. I’m kind of a stickler for accuracy and this card is just a head scratcher.

The picture (I believe) is from 1988 while the card, for some reason, calls to attention Isiah’s last all-star appearance in 1993. On the back of the card Zeke’s 1986 All-Star MVP performance is highlighted?? This card would easily higher on my list if they’d have just chosen one year to highlight. It’s also a shame that this card doesn’t have a red foil parallel. Not sure why. All I know is that red foil is usually the best looking with the Pistons unis, and would have worked equally well with the all-star jersey.

This card, by far, is one of my favorites. The 1993-94 Skybox Premium set, on it’s own, was just a beautiful looking design, and the autograph completes the card nicely.

I’ve always thought the vertical white banner on these cards would lend so nicely to an autograph.

Isiah was signing at the 2015 National Sports Collectors Convention in Chicago, but unfortunately I could not make it. But, I did happen to catch that there was the option to send items to the convention to be signed, so that’s exactly what I did. When I received the card back a couple weeks after the convention, I was not disappointed. It’s exactly what I wanted, signed vertically in blue ink. Couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out.

I also sent the card into PSA/DNA to be certified. Not that I have any question as to the legitimacy of the autograph (nor would I ever sell it), I just like the slabbing to protect the card. Also, this card is a work of art, and any work of art deserves to be in a nice frame 🙂

I picked up this addition to the collection recently. It’s a sample version of the Isiah Thomas/Kerry Kittle 1996 Collector’s Edge Hard Court Time Warp #TW7. The front of the card looks to be like the other non foil stamped versions, but the back has a hand written “sample” across the sequential number. Faintly visible is a /1000 numbering where the number on the left side has a AU prefix indicating that it was an autographed version. The wasn’t an autographed version of this card, but there was a /1000 version of the TW6 with Iverson.

These are the type of pick ups I love adding to my collection. Who knows how many other copies, if any, exist of this card.

This is an autographed mug that was sponsored by Old Style beer. The first 10,000 fans 21 & older received one upon arriving at the Pontiac Silverdome to see the Pistons take on the Chicago Bulls on 1/15/86, and again on 1/29/86 when Dominique Wilkins and the Atlanta Hawks came to town.

Pretty obvious to see what the uncorrected error is on the reverse side of this card is … the Pistons logo is printed on top of a Houston Rockets logo. The non-gold version of this card that I have does not share the same UER, so I’ll have to be on the lookout for another gold version to see if it’s just mine.